mobiles: T Mobile MDA Compact III

In business...for business

With a gleaming compact design and cutting-edge features, T-Mobile MDA Compact III makes for your perfect business-aide. Get the competitive edge with Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system, MS-Office, Web'n'walk and PDF viewer. Groovy music and quality imaging capabilities to

wash away the stress. Latest in connectivity, advanced messaging facilities and satellite navigation capability simply keeps you connected with the world.

The soon-to-be-available HTC Artemis will reach T-Mobile as MDA Compact III, it was displayed in Internationale Funkausstellung/IFA (the international consumer electronics fair) in Berlin.

The HTC Artemis is a quadband smartphone running Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition. It is the first HTC devices with GPS built in. Although we have see built-in WiFi report previously, the MDA Compact III didn't mention anything on the WiFi module.

The Compact III isn't your average Pocket PC phone. If you buy one people may still "think" it's a normal PDA but wait - it's far more than that. First up there's the control mechanism. When I first heard that it came with a trackball I thought back to an old arcade game in the local pub - it was called the "Crystal Maze" and involved a huge amount of trackball spinning. It would be fair to say that I didn't like the idea of a trackball much. Secondly was the scroll-wheel that surrounds the trackball. Surely that wouldn't work ? Would it?

There's something else the MDA Compact III has - GPS. It's built in. No seperate box, no extra bluetooth thingy to charge up - it's inside. Think about it. In space there's millions of pounds worth of satellites floating around, beaming location information right back down to this tiny box of tricks.What else do we have ? Well, we'll get to that in a minute. Let's look at something it doesn't have - most noteably there's no 3G and no WiFi. Bummer, perhaps I'm asking too much ? Is it just me that wants a device with GPS, WiFi, 3G, a QWERTY keyboard, hi-res camera and a numeric keyboard? Perhaps.

As a quick comparison I put the MDA Compact III next to an Orange SPV M3100 / T-Mobile MDA Vario II. As you can see it's a lot slimmer and more lightweight.

For the review we were loaned the MDA Compact III and CoPilot Live. Inside the CoPilot box is a very decent windscreen holder for your MDA Compact III and a car charger.. plus the data card too. It's just a matter of putting the data card into the MDA Compact III and you're done. CoPilot installs and you're ready to go. As a package it's an excellent deal.

Some specifications: